If the stories come, you get them written, you’re on the right track. Eventually everyone learns his or her own best way. The real mystery to crack is you.
BERNARD MALAMUDWriters who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.
More Bernard Malamud Quotes
-
-
It was all those biographies in me yelling, ‘We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.’
BERNARD MALAMUD -
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Those who write about life, reflect about life. you see in others who you are.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
We’re persecuted in the most civilized languages.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Tomorrow the world is not the same as today, though God listens with the same ear.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
How can we be strangers if we both believe in God?
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Reader, I am myself the subject of my book; you would be unreasonable to spend your leisure on so frivolous and so vain a matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
BERNARD MALAMUD -
Where to look if you’ve lost your mind?
BERNARD MALAMUD